


don't hold him down, just hold him

by beenicetobees



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Sam Winchester Has Mental Health Issues, Season/Series 13, Tourette's Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:00:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28600341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beenicetobees/pseuds/beenicetobees
Summary: Sam and his Tourette's through the years.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 58





	don't hold him down, just hold him

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer, my tics are nowhere near as bad as this, so if there are any inaccuracies about having more severe tics, please let me know. But I was thinking about this all day because I have this disease that makes me project everything on to Sam Winchester, and I was sitting there hitting my head against the couch like "what if sam did this instead?" so I wrote this. This is not beta'd at all
> 
> TW: very brief, but Sam does attempt suicide in the middle, after Dean dies. be warned!

Most days it wasn’t a problem. A twitch here, a neck jerk there. They were sporadic, and small. It was nothing like when he was a child, a flurry of noise and movement. There were countless injuries he gave himself, and at least two broken bones. John thought the kid would never be able to hunt. He would alert the monster of their presence, or accidentally shoot one of them when he lost control of his arms. But as the tics died down, and Sam continued to protest being left alone, Dean vouched for him. And there were minimal incidents. 

But they didn’t go away. They were less noticeable, sure, and definitely less dangerous, but they never _stopped_. At Stanford, friendly jabs were passed his way about how his vocal tics made him sound like a startled guinea pig, and less than friendly mimicking of his head jerking from side to side. Some people thought it was very funny how copying his tics would make him tic more, would laugh as he flushed red and struggled to stop ticcing long enough to tell them to shut up. Jess was always good to him though, and got him away from those people when he started to tic. 

When Jess died, they got bad. When he pulled his back out, he was laid up for a week, and still he couldn’t stop moving. Every time he would jerk to the side, it would send blinding pain through his whole body. Yet another reason he couldn’t sleep.

After Dad died, he broke his hand on the roof of the Impala.

The rest of Azazel’s kids looked at him warily. He tried to suppress most of them, but when he did that they always came out big and loud. 

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?”

But he led them anyway, and still, they followed.

When Dean died he had the worst tic attack of his life. He was stuck in his head in his useless fucking body and he never hated his Tourette’s more. Because his head wasn’t a very good place to be, and his hands kept jerking away from the gun he was going to use to end it all. 

But the blood made it stop. The blood gave him _control_ , and it was intoxicating. He could focus. His body could focus. So sue him if he loved it. Sue him if he needed it. 

But the apocalypse happened, and it was his fault, so of course that’s when it got bad again. Just another reason Dean couldn't trust him, another reason his voice wasn’t heard and his choices weren’t respected. Oh, that’s just Sammy, the snot-nosed kid who followed Dead around shouting and flailing. He couldn’t control his temper, couldn’t even control his own body, how could he take on the devil?

But he did. With a jerk twist yelp he took control of his own limbs, his own brain, and he jumped into that cage of his own volition, and it felt good. 

When he was soulless, he didn’t tic. And when Sam stumbled into that room and stabbed Cas, when he fell and cut his hand and screamed, and his back tensed once, twice, three times, Dean nearly cried.

But they weren’t bad. Dean thought they were, but they weren’t. When he flinched, it wasn’t because of the building tension crawling up his spine, it was because of Satan setting off fireworks on his shoulders, pulling hairs out of his skull one by one. But it was better not to mention it. Why burst Dean’s bubble? It looked the same from the outside. And when he covered his ears and wailed, well then that was just a new tic. Of course he would come back from hell with new tics, that just made sense.

Amelia thought he was weird. She thought he was dangerous, backed away from his sudden motions. But he explained, and she understood. And she loved him, no, she needed him. And he needed her. 

The trials hurt. They were exhausting, but he didn’t tic. Even through all that stress, they didn’t get bad. He was suffering enough, he was given a brief reprieve. It was a sign. He was Chosen by God. 

He tried to stop them, after Gadreel. He needed to be in control. He needed to know everything that was going to happen or he would lose hold on the small thread tying him to composure. Like always, it didn’t work and didn’t last long. Castiel held him gently as the attack racked through him, a reminder that he wasn't trapped, he wasn’t in a cage, he was his own self, in his own body, and this was just something that came with it. Castiel held him close, but he didn’t hold him down. 

Castiel held him close. Lucifer held him down. 

Mary was guilty, or she was scared. Or she was annoyed. Maybe she thought his Tourette’s was her fault for some reason, or she was sad that her youngest son was so fucked up. Whatever it was, she flinched whenever Sam ticced. The movement caused him to tic more, and it was a loop. An endless, painful loop. It only stopped after Dean took her to the side. After that, she stopped flinching. Instead, she just stopped looking at him at all. He couldn’t make himself be mad at her. 

Jack ticced too. At first Sam thought he was mimicking him, like when he copied all of Dean’s body language, but he watched him through the cameras as he twisted and jerked. Sometimes golden power escaped his body and bounced off the walls. Books and lamps would fly and break.

Sam remembered being 23, and breaking all of the fluorescents in their motel room. The building feeling in his spine that usually indicated a neck jerk or a crack of the knuckles, instead caused destruction. At the time, it was a reminder that he had no control over his destiny. If the evil inside him was as uncontrollable as his tics, than he was sure that Dean would have no choice but to kill him. 

And he could see that in Jack, an impossibly powerful nephilim with abilities beyond their comprehension, and apparently he had Tourette’s. Okay. They could deal with this. Jack curled up in the corner, his head hitting the wall far too hard for Sam’s liking. His right leg kicked out in front of him sporadically. Tears ran down his face, but he yelped though the meltdown, high pitched and loud. The tic was strong, big, just like everything else about Jack. 

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t even - _AI!_ I couldn’t do the one good thing you asked, but I made all this happen. _Mmnh!_ ” He grunted and jerked his head back three times. He was hyperventilating. Sam dropped to the floor quickly, and grabbed his hand. Jack yelped again. 

Sam smiled as he felt the tension in his spine building, and he mimicked Jack’s tic. Jack looked up. He was terrified, and confused, and just a little bit curious. Sam pulled him into a hug.

“Breathe,” he said. And Jack did. 

Even as they held each other in a loop, neither of them were trapped. Sam held his son close, but he didn’t hold him down.


End file.
